No Future for the GOP?

luka

Well-known member
ah! ok then! it just goes to show you Stan, im the only one who pays attention to anything you say. your only friend in the world.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
ah! ok then! it just goes to show you Stan, im the only one who pays attention to anything you say. your only friend in the world.
Yeah I was kinda confused. I thought it was a fairly intelligible statement, as far as my posts are concerned. And perhaps even grammatically accurate.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've told you this in threads before Tea, your vision of what is "obviously" the "natural" interpretation is so hopelessly biased by your own partisan agenda that you misread things, jump to conclusions, and then claim it's inevitable.
I don't think it's about interpretation so much is it though? I think he misspoke so the question is no so much "what is the meaning of what he said?" but rather "how much does what he accidentally said by reveal about how he truly feels?".
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't think it's about interpretation so much is it though? I think he misspoke so the question is no so much "what is the meaning of what he said?" but rather "how much does what he accidentally said by reveal about how he truly feels?".
Although I am of course making an assumption of my own in asserting that.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I really don't know anything about this issue of voter suppression, but I suspect A) the GoP is actually making policy efforts, maybe primarily at the state level, to make voting inconvenient for likely Democratic voters, which makes sense tactically, and B) that progressive liberal outlets are erring on the side of blowing this issue out of proportion
 

sus

Well-known member
I don't think it's about interpretation so much is it though? I think he misspoke so the question is no so much "what is the meaning of what he said?" but rather "how much does what he accidentally said by reveal about how he truly feels?".
It absolutely is a question of interpretation. The literal meaning of "Americans" is "Americans." Not "white Americans" or any other kind of Americans.

"in general" or "broadly" are nice clarifying notes, but it's normal for people to statistically contrast a subset with its superset. That's a very normal thing to do.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
It absolutely is a question of interpretation. The literal meaning of "Americans" is "Americans." Not "white Americans" or any other kind of Americans.

"in general" or "broadly" are nice clarifying notes, but it's normal for people to statistically contrast a subset with its superset. That's a very normal thing to do.
Arguably its the central comparison to make, when considering voter suppression.
 
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sus

Well-known member
Yeah, I mean, using "in general" or "broadly" is a pretty normal linguistic move, enough that I think any speechwriter of McConnell's would have thought to put it in, so it's a good chance he was speaking off the cuff, or botched his script, or whatever, but taking "Americans" to mean "white Americans" is only an interpretive move you make if you already think Mitch is a racist scumbag, or that the GOP is a racist party. It's not the "obvious natural" reading
 

sus

Well-known member
And Mitch may be a racist scumbag! But this doesn't prove it, and the left's whole "dogwhistle" paranoia schtick is lame and confused, moving on now...
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Thats why I'm inclined to give ol' Mitch here the benefit of the doubt, because I think that is the exact rebuttal to make against claims of unequal voter turn out. But again, and I can't stress this enough, I don't know any authoritative stats here.

That said, I'm pretty confident he doesn't care about black voter suppression, and is just using this point to shut down what he likely thinks is a nagging social justice line of inquiry.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Although I am of course making an assumption of my own in asserting that.
Actually listening back then maybe he didn't say it wrong at all "African-Americans are voting in just as high a proportion as Americans (as a whole)" does make sense although I think it would be an unwise line to come out with deliberately as - without the bit in brackets - it lays him open to the accusation that he doesn't consider African-Americans as Americans. I assumed that he meant to say "African-Americans area voting in just as high a proportion as white Americans (or Americans who are not from an ethnic minority or some such)" but... comparing them to the country as a whole actually makes more sense.
I'm thinking about this too much.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Actually listening back then maybe he didn't say it wrong at all "African-Americans are voting in just as high a proportion as Americans (as a whole)" does make sense although I think it would be an unwise line to come out with deliberately as - without the bit in brackets - it lays him open to the accusation that he doesn't consider African-Americans as Americans. I assumed that he meant to say "African-Americans area voting in just as high a proportion as white Americans (or Americans who are not from an ethnic minority or some such)" but... comparing them to the country as a whole actually makes more sense.
I'm thinking about this too much.
Yeah the "oh he doesn;t think of african-americans as americans!" I think is low-hanging fruit, even for raging partisans, but you're right that he's probably better off not even inviting such facile scrutiny.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And for the record, the fact that I can step up to defend McConnell indicates, to me, that I can step up to defend virtually anyone.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It absolutely is a question of interpretation. The literal meaning of "Americans" is "Americans." Not "white Americans" or any other kind of Americans.

"in general" or "broadly" are nice clarifying notes, but it's normal for people to statistically contrast a subset with its superset. That's a very normal thing to do.
But you're missing my point, I thought that he had misspoken (although now I am not so sure) in which case spending ages analysing something he didn't meant to say to extract its meaning would be wasted effort.

But yeah, of course, if those are the words that were written by his speechwriter and that came up on his prompter then you need to consider what it might mean before criticising.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I do think we're all on the same page about McConnell's angle overall, but this is a great example of how a news excerpt's reception is practically predetermined in a bipolar fashion.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
One thing that is interesting to me is just how ambiguous language is. I mean of course we've all known that forever - maybe since when, as kids, we first heard a joke along the lines of "I'll get the nail into position and when I nod my head you hit it with the hammer" - but I've really come to truly grasp that almost nothing can be nailed down.

A few years ago a British MP was hoping for his nanny to get citizenship and he wrote a note on her file "Don't give her any special treatment but do it faster" and I remember people were arguing for ages about whether that was or wasn't an undue use of his influence to speed up the process. Though that's not an ambiguity in the language as such, the problem is he wrote two directly contradictory sentences.

Lately, with Trump particularly, I've seen that his defenders will swear blind that he didn't say what you think he said. People can argue for ages about the meaning of the shortest and simplest of sentences... I suppose here I'm thinking of Trump saying "Find me 11,000 votes which I need to win" or whatever it was. His defenders would say that he wasn't asking for votes to be changed or made up or illegally created, he was just innocently asking for the guy to find them... cos they might be missing - and literally speaking they are right. Of course it's the intent we're talking about here and that's so hard to pin down, it can be literally the opposite of what is said.

One of my favourites was Alexander Pope who apparently was annoyed by loads of people asking him to read their manuscripts, he came up with a kind of standard reply which he posted to all of them - "Thank you for your manuscript, I shall lose no time in reading it" - deliberately designed to torment them and leave them agonisingly wondering if he was gonna read it as soon as he possibly could... or not at all.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't know what the legal standard for deciding what someone meant is... I'm asking, if you have the mob boss on the phone to his guy and he says "OK, she knows too much, you're gonna have to take her out for me, do it tonight" and then she gets murdered, how far can the defence "I was just asking my friend to take her to the movies" get him? Does it just come down to the jury's common sense?

There was one I remember from years ago in the UK. I think that there were two criminals and when they were surprised by the police the younger one who could perhaps be expected to do what the other one said was holding the gun. I think the policeman demanded he put down the gun and hand it over and the guy without the gun said "Let him have it" and... well, what do you think it means?

If I remember rightly he shot him and killed him. Thinking back I reckon the guy with the gun was too young to be hanged but the bloke who spoke wasn't and I think in the end he was hanged when the jury decided he had ordered the other guy to shoot.
 

Leo

Well-known member
And for the record, the fact that I can step up to defend McConnell indicates, to me, that I can step up to defend virtually anyone.

you're not actually coming to his defense, which implies trying to justify his beliefs. you're just clarifying his statement.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I remember a few years ago some policeman giving a talk to "local communities" and he was supposed to discuss Sunni Muslims and Shi-ites but he called them "the shitties" - didn't go over too well.
Plot twist: the copper was Sunni.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It actually does matter quite a bit whether (your interpretation) of the statistical correlation he claims is "true or not," unless you're accusing him of blatantly manufacturing statistics.

@Clinamenic's interpretation is most likely the correct one here. Because non-hispanic, white turnout is significantly higher than non-hispanic black turnout, whereas black turnout is roughly equivalent to overall voter turnout.

So, if you're being remotely charitable to Mitch, it's clear his claim was referencing "Americans in general," not white people. Because that's the only way his statistical claim shakes out

He doesn't mention statistics at all, though, does he? He's made a single bald claim without attaching any numbers to it.

But, again, he's not the sort of person that one is naturally inclined to think the best of, not least because he's the spitting image of the freaky motherfucker with eyes in his hands from Pan's Labyrinth.
 
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